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"You'll figure it out. You always do."
The dismissal stung, even if he had come to expect this response. Afterall his batchers had more urgent problems justifying requesting imminent input to figure out the best tactics of how to proceed their assignments. It was logical. He could handle it.
So Fox just nodded dismissively and everybody moved on to discuss a plan Neyo laid out. On his next campaign he planned to conceal his troops movements by touching down a considerable distance away from the mission's rendezvous point and advancing the last clicks by speeder bikes and with their boots in the dirt. Fox couldn't contribute any valuable input. It was impossible to gain experience in long distance travel and no urban stealth on Triple Zero. It was best to prioritize vode with field missions.
But Fox had never been anyone's priority. He'd been always an integral part of the vode present in this call, but he'd never been as close with anybody as Cody and Rex, Ponds and Bly, Neyo and Bacara, Gree and Monnk, Wolffe and Doom. He was nobody's first pick. It was ok. He could handle it.
There just was nothing casual or approachable about Fox. Everything about him was rather intense and he could never escape it. It had been both a blessing and a curse. Fox loved all his batchers equally and ferociously. When you are not fed love on a silver spoon, you ultimately learn to lick it off knives. He wasn't really sure they realized they always kept him on edge.
There hadn't been any surprises when Fox had been assigned the position of Marshal Commander of the Coruscant Guard without a General at his side. His skill profile painted a picture of an independent, self-sufficient and highly competent CC. Nobody thought it was necessary to offer additional input and support. It was fine. He could handle it.
Fox quickly learned that he didn't hold any sort of sole claim on hyper competency. Sure he was fast but actually.. Thire was faster. He's was strong like every CC but Thorn was definitely stronger. He's smart but honestly in the grand scheme of things Stone was even smarter. But one thing about Fox was being the most adaptable. He had an uncanny awareness of his surroundings and how to use them to his advantage. He was the best at turning any situation in his favor. He would take a shot nobody else even thought of and hit the bullseye. Every time.
Fox made sure that the Guard would always be his first priority. Even if they didn't have anything, they'd always have all of him. He began strategizing how minimize conflicts between a corps of highly trained clone troopers and highly volatile natborns. He made rules to protect his men. He enforced the rules. He followed protocol and regs and orders. He reported failure to the Chancellor. He They bore the consequences. His men didn't really understand. It was to be expected. He could handle it.
As the war dragged on he quickly stopped asking his GAR batchers for input. They couldn't prioritize simple riot control strategics over life or death front line assaults, but quite frankly they seldomly paid enough attention to the very different mission parameters on Coruscant anyways. They still needed his expertise in urban warfare and navigating civil conflicts from time to time. He didn't skip any comm meeting if he could make the time.
── ⟢ ・⸝⸝
Staying close to someone is a conscious choice after the circumstances that kept you together on a day to day basis for years change permanently. Staying present in each other lives takes a lot of effort and prioritizing the time spent together.
Fox had missed the fourth officially scheduled meeting in a row. He was stretched too thin between his official duties and his off the record efforts to keep the natborns who could hurt his men satisfied to not do so. He hadn't slept anywhere close to four hours a cycle in the last two ten days. He needed more time to dig up a allegedly purifying stone from the Outer Rim a Senator had requested on a whim. He needed more time to fix the latest patrol routes after the destruction left behind by a particularly violent riot still visible all around the mid and lower levels. He needed more time to write his reports to the Chancellor to maybe have a slight chance to request an additional supply of bacta for the men injured during the riot. He needed more time to figure out if there were any task he could entrust to his commanders without endangering them unnecessarily. He needed more time to heal from the head injury he had sustained when the Chancellor had been furious about his guard troopers shown on holo news exposing their incompetence to even handle a small riot. He badly wanted to prioritize his vode. It was impossible. He couldn't handle it.
── ⟢ ・⸝⸝
They had been watching the reports of the home front. It was weird to see non military recordings of the Corries containing a riot of unprecedented scale in the narrowest levels of durasteel buildings. Their strategy had worked out but the cost had been high, the news focused on heavy damage to the urban infrastructure because there hadn't been many injured natborns. Cody focused on the high injury rate among the vode. They just hadn't had enough men power and apparently some equipment hadn't been updated to the official GAR standard. He looked at the holograms of grim faces mirroring his complicated feelings.
"We didn't know. I think we all were trying to encourage him he was the most capable to handle the home front. Fox never wanted our help.. I didn't realize he was asking for our support over and over again with just listing mission parameters. And I don't know how to fix this. But I want to suggest contacting Fox again. Even if he doesn't have time my vote is to prioritize trying to gather more intel on how to support the Guard."